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Greetings, programs! We find before us a new challenge, with some rules familiar and some changed. No longer limited to a mere month, now we have an entire season with which to craft tales to delight, astound, educate, and amaze. It is certain that this new challenge format will produce tales that are truly epic in scope.

This time, the challenge before you is to tell a story where the characters find themselves faced with a situation in which they choose, or perhaps are forced, to “misbehave.” They’ll act out of rebellion, or possibly secret orders, or maybe a deep-seated belief that what they’ve been asked to do is wrong. The circumstances of the trial before them, and their act(s) of misbehavior, are of course up to you.

This sort of story has been seen several times in Trek, and is a popular storytelling device in many other genres, so there is an extra bit of challenge in making your story stand out, of using the trope in a way we haven’t seen, or possibly as a stunningly well-written example of something we have seen. We have a surfeit of talented authors here, and I have no doubt we’ll be regaled with some extraordinary tales.

If you want, you can also include a theme of “tradition” in your story. Perhaps the characters have to find a way to maintain a certain tradition despite their misbehavior, or maybe they end up creating one of their own, or possibly they’re rebelling against a long-standing tradition. To borrow a lyric from ‘Weird Al’, “It’s tradition, that makes it OK,” when it’s quite possibly anything but.

The Grid is live, programs… will you take up the challenge?

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Here are “The Rules.” Any questions can be directed here or to me via PM.

I think it's an interesting concept that holds a lot of possibilities - perhaps there is a danger of retreading too much old ground (I'm thinking breaking the Prime Directive to do what's 'right') but that is of course a matter for the author to deal with.

Nothing immediately springs to mind for me personally, but as I've said the challenge is an interesting one so I'll see what ideas may or may not develop and get back to you all!

Starfleet captains violate the Prime Directive so often it can hardly be considered "misbehaving" Whenever the Prime Directive is mentioned, it reminds me of the "Pirates' Code" from Pirates of the Caribbean...